


A God and a Woman of Stone

by daisybrien



Category: Shingeki no Kyojin | Attack on Titan
Genre: Angst, Awkward Conversations, Compare and Contrast, Conversations, F/M, Friendship, Gen, Greek Mythology - Freeform, Heavy Angst, Hurt/Comfort, Late Night Conversations, Literary References & Allusions, Loneliness, Mythology References, Pre-Scouting Legion, Pre-Survey Corps, Reading Aloud
Language: English
Status: Completed
Published: 2016-03-27
Updated: 2016-03-27
Packaged: 2018-05-29 13:46:56
Rating: General Audiences
Warnings: Creator Chose Not To Use Archive Warnings
Chapters: 1
Words: 3,908
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/6378244
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/daisybrien/pseuds/daisybrien
Summary: <blockquote class="userstuff">
              <p>There are some worthy of the divine punishment sought for them, even if their guilt is never as apparent as their innocence.</p>
            </blockquote>





	A God and a Woman of Stone

Annie can smell the crisp of autumn dawning that Sunday evening, browning leaves dotting trees and ready to fall to the ground and rot into nothing in the earth. Its chill rustles in the bramble and bush, bringing the threat of an early snow in the bitter bite against the back of her neck. The setting sun is still just warm enough to settle the goose bumps that threaten to rise in her skin, wrapping her hood over her head just enough to block out its glare as she looks up to the pale orange shade of the evening sky.

She lets her head fall back against the tree trunk she rests against, closing her eyes as she takes in a deep breath of wood smoke and pine needles. Laughter drifts towards her on the breeze, and melding of cheery voices of children too young to be soldiers making the most of a day off. She does not join them, only smiles idly to herself to keep the sadness at bay. While they take their day off to reminisce on their camaraderie, she takes her rightful break from her façade, too lost in the peace of the present to worry about the looming future, or the twinge of anxiety at not being as alone as she wishes she were.

She opens one eye at the swish of a turning page, peering at slender, gentle hands that cradle brittle and yellowing papers loose in its leather bindings. Its fingers traverse the pages, tracing over the fading ink of cramped words in awed reverence. Her eyes trail up its arm, sweaty clothes hanging limp on the lean muscle of thin arms to bony shoulder. Blond hair just brushes against it, bordering the face of a boy intent on knowledge, face twisted in utmost concentration, blue eyes twinkling with an innate inquisitiveness as they zoom past each page with the focus of an eagle. 

“Why are you all the way out here?” she wonders out loud, her voice reaching him on the edge of the grove of trees she had retreated into in her search for quiet solitude. She pretends not to see him jump, a flurry of blond hair whipping with his head as he snaps around to spot her. She only looks in front of her, acting as if she can’t see his poised and flustered posture from the corner of her eye, wrapping her arms around herself tighter.

“I-I’m sorry?” Armin stutters out, taking a deep breath at the sight of Annie’s tiny figure curled up by a tree, looking harmless. He moves onto his haunches, scrambling through the bramble towards her. She turns away, cursing herself at drawing that kind of attention to herself, wanting to sink deeper into the branches, alone.

“I mean,” she starts. Her voice plateaus, as it always does, smooth as polished granite under her fingers. “All of your friends are out there laughing and having fun. Why would you want to stay all the way out here?”

“Well,” Armin says slowly, a trail of uncertainty in his wobbling tone, “I could say the same for you.”

“Hm.” Annie retreats farther into her hoodie. “Your good friends, I mean. Eren. Mikasa, and everyone else.”

“Reiner and Bert are there too,” Armin replies. As if on cue, a barking, booming laugh rumbles over towards their little sanctuary from the distant fire like thunder, followed by a chorus of laughter peeling after it loyally. They both turn towards the rambunctiousness that had begun to erupt around the smoky embers, Reiner’s big burly form cast in shadow as he looms over the group of teens animatedly. “Aren’t they your good friends?”

Annie looks down at her hands, nails ticking as she picks at their edges. She tries not to dwell on his joyousness, his seemingly impeccable transition from outside to the army, earning the love of everyone with a kind and utterly reliable mask over his face. They’re out in the thick of the social schematics of their recruitment. They’ve refused to stay low and have gotten mixed up in the emotions of people she wished weren’t obstacles of their commitment rather than staying out of the way and sitting with her in the safety of the company of nothing but the chattering wilderness. She clenches her stomach, as if it were threatening to yank away from her body, drag her with it towards the bonfire with a strange aching; whether to join in the festivities and give into the fun of it, or to drag the two of the boys away from their own little hopes, she can’t tell. It’s probably both.

“Maybe I just want to be alone,” she mumbles to the ground.

A soft laugh chimes above her, and she looks up to see Armin smiling down at her, his eyes alight with a familiar clever understanding she has seen before. It’s the look when he knows something the others don’t, wowing officers with an unmatchable intelligence and putting the rest of them to shame.

“Maybe the same could be said for me, then,” Armin says. The leaves dotting the ground beside her crackle under the weight of his backside as he flops into the space beside her. He shifts cross-legged, perching his chin on his hand as he opens his book in his lap.

He settles in beside her, their knees just barely brushing each other as he leans against her tree trunk, shifting until his butt makes its comfortable groove in the bed of grass beneath them. She tries to ignore him, turning away, looking back at the orange ball of fire in the distance instead of the warmth boring into the side of her leg, gentle but insistent, content in its solitude but still urging her response. His silence helps her, not having to entertain conversation she always finds herself stuttering through; their talk does not devolve into awkwardness, only a comfortable, mutual silence, understanding of the other’s privacy. She can respect the need to be alone with someone else.

It is easy to ignore Armin. It is the book in his lap that catches her attention, the lettering curled and elegant, illustrations decorating the brunt of some of the pages, the scratches of notes or sketches pressed snug into the margins in different handwritings, some familiar, some in languages she doesn’t know of ever existing. 

She fails to resist her curiosity, tilting in just enough to get a better look at the page he has flipped to. She makes sure to stay still, her breaths coming shallow and silent, her head stiff as it hovers over his shoulder, scared to disturb him or make her interest known. She wouldn’t very much mind if it did; the occasion where she would risk that show of caring for something over her safety of calm nonchalance was rare and few in between. 

It’s almost like a storybook, although the font is too small and the illustrations too plain to be amusing to a child. Her eyes strain, unable to pick up the shape of the words, too dilapidated to be seen from the distance she is at. The intent of her focus leaves her startled when she scans across to the next page, another woman staring up at her with a godlike face twisted into grotesque agony. It’s almost ethereal, yet blocky and chopped in the way it is sketched; she is all angles, her prone form and arms raised as if wanting to protect herself etched with hard, definite lines, the smoothness of a pretty face gone underneath the harshness of each sever line. Her colour is drained close to near death, lines shaded in to give her the illusion of a uniform and glossy translucence, as if she was made of murky glass. It would be beautiful if not for the empty sadness in the woman’s eyes, and her stiff, permanent disposition glaringly apparent even in a still picture. 

Annie shivers, tucking her hands further into her armpits, curling into herself and pulling her hood further over her head like a shield. A thumb shoots up for her to chew on, the bad habit aggravated by the chilling anxiety it had caused. It’s a terrifying thing to look away from, to ignore after just one cheap glance, as if disregarding the divine warning of a bad omen yet to come upon her.

Her fetal posture leaves her teetering on the balls of her feet, and with a soft curse sends her stumbling into Armin’s back, knocking the two of them forward. He lets out the smallest of gasps before turning around, his face still friendly but bemused in its confusion.

“Sorry,” she says, settling back against the trunk of the tree. She takes to staring at the wear of her shoes.

“Oh, no, it’s quite alright, don’t worry!” Armin exclaims, the same breathy and frantic voice it always is, even in the calm of the current moment. He starts gathering   
the book in his arms again, clutching it to him with white knuckles. He inspects every page of it quickly, flipping through it carefully. Annie sees that some chunks of paper are starting to tear away from the withered binding. 

She doesn’t respond, wraps her arms around her knees, pulling them to her chest to fend from the sudden and biting cold. She makes herself tiny, nestling into the alcove of the tree’s roots that rise up in sharp ridges from the dirt. The act of being invisible is something she hasn’t yet mastered, though; even as still and small as she is, she is still big enough for Armin to see, no chance for her to disappear from his gaze of concern. 

The shuffling of papers stops. She can feel eyes boring into her back, sees the toe of Armin’s boot creep into the corner of her vision, a plume of dust rising with it.

“You alright?” he asks her. There is a thump as his body slumps against the ground again. “You know it was an accident, right? You don’t have to worry about it so much.”

“Yeah,” she mumbles to herself. Her arms fall limp to her side, shoulders falling, muscles sighing after releasing the tension she hadn’t meant to hold. “I know.”

She almost lets herself relax beside him before he pipes up again. “You know, if you’re curious, you could just ask to see it.”

Annie turns to him, eyes flicking from his tentative face to the volume in his grip. Both are worn and defeated, bodies sunken and nimble, faces vibrant beneath dirt and scratches.

“Would you have let me?” she asks him.

“Sure, I mean,” his shoulders sink a little, a he stares down at the closed pages with wide, protective eyes. His arms cradle it to his chest as if it were a child, a cherished heirloom he couldn’t afford to lose. His eyebrows rise in a furrow that she has seen on him before; she reads fear off him easier than he can read off any book. “No one has ever asked to see it before, I’ve never risked taking it out in front of a lot of people.”

“Why?”

“I just have to keep it a secret, is all,” he mumbles. Then, his face splits into an achingly friendly grin, beaming at her. “But it’s not such a big deal that I can’t trust you with it.”

“You’re saying you wouldn’t trust me with a big deal?” she quips, raising an eyebrow at him. He’s about to fumble over himself before she gives him a small smirk, letting him realize the joke it was meant to be. They fall into easy laughter then, both looking down at the dirt. A small trail of ants marches its way through the dust near the outer edge of Annie’s foot. She keeps still, afraid to disturb their tiny parade.

“I think you’re good at keeping secrets,” he says, giving her another painful smile, all white teeth bared and eyes screwed shut against the severity of it. He says it as though it’s a good thing.

He puts the book on the ground, unfurling it slowly. Annie almost stops it before its farthest edge can hit the ground; he doesn’t see the little line of ants trailing behind the other, and they shoot away frightfully at the sudden obstacle that bears down like a threat, their order falling into chaos against the monster. She swallows a lump in her throat like gravel, heaviness a rock in her gut.

He flips through each page carefully, the paper delicate and frail against his fingers. As he does, his confidence from before seems to dissipate, ooze off in a sudden spur only for it to seep away into the foliage. It leaves him mumbling humbly, a hand rubbing the back of his neck bashfully. His eyes flit from the pages to her face expectantly; she doesn’t know whether the pained longing on his face indicates that he still wants her attention or not.

“It’s mostly a collection of stories,” he trails off, eyes flicking up to see if she is listening again. She gives him a jerk of a nod, averting her eyes and focusing again on the words below her. He continues, almost on a relieved laugh. “They’re like myths, from a really long time ago, although I’ve never seen a book like this before, so, um, I don’t really know where they came from.”

“The book seems too old for it to have been made by anyone in this generation, or ones that lived in these walls.” The words slip from her before she can stop them, biting her tongue with her molars. Luckily, Armin nods with her, giving her a tentative grin.

“That’s why we need to keep it a secret, then,” he says, his voice a little more assured.

She agrees silently. With another jerk of a nod, she turns back to the book. Armin flips each page quickly, almost too fast to take in the fleeting picture sprawled artfully through the layers of it. The ants avoid the pages, a few braver – or reckless – ones scurrying across the edges of the bindings but still too frightful to get lost within the volatile sheaths. 

His voice spirals along, too fast to follow just like the pages. He speeds hastily through explanation, history and interconnectedness, of the links of gods and mythical creatures and the people who praised them. He tells her of all his favourites, of how they emphasize the roles and nature of humanity and the world. Sometimes, he gives her eyes a rest, showing her a particular story that she takes as a respite from the dizzying speed of it. Annie pays more attention to his enthusiasm rather than the object of it; his bright face alight with passion would be an enthralling enticement for her to join if she weren’t still so shaken by the image from before, seared as a stubborn permanence in her brain now that she has dwelled too much on it.

“Uh, sorry, Armin,” she interrupts. He looks up to her, a pause before she feeds her interest against her better judgment. “None of these are the stories I wanted to see before.”

He’s sweet, giving her an understanding smile and parting the pages, starting from somewhere beyond the middle of the volume. He pinches a wad of them in his hand, slowly releasing it page by page so she can stop him when she finds it.

“Do you know which one it was?” he asks. “Anything familiar about it?”

“There was a drawing of a woman, in pain,” Annie responds, dubious. The description won’t be of much help; as every page goes by she is given more pictures, more frightened women cowering from the brutal hands of monster and man. There can’t possibly be a reason for all this punishment, an explanation for how so many women could be vile enough to deserve their fate. Rather, it is simply more an injustice for existing godlike and proud; behind each screaming face is a passion for something none were allowed to have just by virtue of its being there.

The chill runs up her spine again; silvery, blank eyes bore into hers for the second time. She extends one shaking hand, stopping the page mid-turn. Armin looks up at her, eyes questioning.

“It was this one,” Annie deadpans. 

“Oh,” Armin says, “really? It’s a pretty short one, if you want to read it?”

“I just liked the picture,” Annie grunts, picking at the edges of her sleeves. Her eye is caught on one of the ants again, a weakling that had been knocked from its perch by the breeze caused by the moving pages. It lies on its back, legs twitching erratically as it tries to turn over to scurry away in fear. Some begin to retreat with it, even trying to dig into the soil for protection, a hiding place.

“It is very pretty, isn’t it,” Armin muses. “Is that all you wanted to see?”

“What happened to her?” Annie’s voice is fast, almost frantic, and she looks back at her feet. Leaning back on her haunches, she’s about to stutter through words that fail to come when Armin jumps into his explanation. If she seems shaken, he doesn’t notice. Or he ignores it; she doesn’t know whether doing that or not would be a bigger injury to someone’s dignity.

“Have you heard of an amethyst before?” he starts, smiling when she nods. “It’s supposed to be a rare purple stone. They haven’t found much of it within the walls, it would be a waste of land to try and mine it. I think the myth is meant to explain its existence, don’t know why they would find such a brutal way to do it, though.

“It starts with the god of wine and ecstasy after having faced an injustice,” he continues, his eyes skimming the words. “Engulfed in seething rage, he set up a trap of tigers, swearing to kill the next mortal to cross his path. An innocent woman named Amethyst, who wanted to pay her respects to the gods, had been the unlucky mortal to pass through his trap first. The tigers lunged at her immediately. The gods had no time to save her from her fate; instead, they turned her into a quartz statue to keep her from being injured.

“And when the god of wine had seen what he had done, he was overcome with grief, weeping tears of wine that stained the crystal purple,” he stops, peeking up at Annie to see if she is still following; she stopped paying attention a while ago, drawing her arms around herself.

“Annie, are you alright?” 

She snaps up to look at him, words louder than she wants them to be. “What?”

Armin stares at her, gaping as he flounders to find the right words. There is concern in his big blue eyes, shining like crystal. The thought of it makes her nauseous. “If you’re cold, we could go to the bonfire.”

“What makes you think that?” she says. She can feel her face twisting in a small grimace against her will, and she turns away; she doesn’t want to offend.

“You just seemed to be, curled up like that,” Armin says. “You’re shivering.”

“It’s nothing,” Annie states. She manages to tear herself away from the book in front of her, and the terrifying yet magnetic gaze of the mortal Amethyst as she screams in paralyzing silence. Her heavy body slumps back against the tree trunk. 

“I didn’t want to upset you,” Armin begins. His shoes scrape against the ground as he approaches her, stopping just before the space between them becomes small enough to be personal. “I should have told you that the myths were pretty gruesome, I mean, this was one of the less violent ones-“

“I said it’s nothing,” Annie sighs. She speaks to the sky, looking up into the grey and green canopy above, the few pockets of light that penetrate it slowly dimming as the sun finally dips over the horizon. There is no anger in her voice, or annoyance. It is only weighted by a breathy exhaustion.

The sky grows dark, leaving the two of them in a blanket of shadow that muffles the silence between them. It is only tamed by the flicker of the bonfire in the distance, but its warmth is too far to be of help to the new cold, voices of comfort and laughter drifting on the air growing quiet. She turns away from all of it.

“The sun seems to disappear so fast in the evenings, doesn’t it,” Armin muses, a pathetic attempt to break the silence. “One minute it’s bright as can be, and in the blink of an eye you’ve missed the sunset

“It’s starting to get pretty chilly here,” he continues, pondering over each word like a salesman trying to persuade a stubborn customer. “And the dark makes it hard to read. You want to head to the bonfire with me?”

“No,” Annie says lightly. “You go on ahead.”

“I’d feel bad knowing you’re alone,” he says.

“Don’t be.” She finally turns to meet his eye, blows some wisps of blonde hair from her vision. “I don’t mind it.”

“I can’t help it,” he laughs sadly. He looks down at his feet as they nudge around dead leaves in the soil, dejected. It’s too dark for Annie to see what happened to the little family of ants on their mission home. “I had to be so negative, talking about innocent Amethyst, all lonely as a statue. I don’t want to leave you like that.”

Annie almost laughs at that, an idle, ire smirk threatening to break her face. A sigh replaces it, one that heaves at her aching shoulders, opening up her sore lungs and burning throat.

“Not all people are as good and innocent as Amethyst,” Annie says. “Some people need to survive that loneliness.”

“Do you think you’re one of those people?” he asks her, and when she finally meets his eyes she can see that he is in pain, that there is a sadness in them that radiates towards her. He looks to her like she were a beggar on the street, ragged and desolate curled up in her corner, in need of a hand of charity. She doesn’t want one, not when she doesn’t need to be pitied, not when she doesn’t deserve it.

She flashes him a soft smile, nodding her head out into the clearing. “Go be with your friends,” she says. “Eren and Mikasa are probably wondering where you are.”  
Armin opens his mouth, about to say something. There is a moment where his body inflates, determination making him stubborn in his pursuit to get her to follow, but it leaves as soon as it arrives. Instead, he just sighs, nodding his head and smiling as he gets up, turning to make his way back to the bonfire.

She watches his back, his body growing smaller as he makes his way. She turns away at the swell of bodies and happy voices announcing his welcome arrival, the crescendo in gaiety, and keeps her mind on the blessed simplicity of her solitude, herself rock solid, everything pushed far to keep it from cracking under the sharp teeth of the waiting enemy.


End file.
